A Vulnerability In His Armor
by AlexaNDYE
Summary: Nightmares that plague Pepper's mind has her convinced that she's going to be responsible for Tony's death. She knows he'd risk his life to protect her, but she can't stop the guilt from eating her from the inside out.


" _Pepper," She heard his unmistakable voice, but where it came from was an entirely different question. She looked down at the light up pad on the table in front of her and saw Tony Stark's face illuminating half of the surface. "Uh, how big are your hands?"_

 _She pressed the button on the pad to accept the call. "What?"_

" _How big are your hands?" He repeated._

 _She still wasn't sure what he was asking, or why he was asking in the first place. "I don't understand why—"_

" _Get down here. I need you." His face disappeared in the corner of the pad._

 _Pepper sighed to herself as she lowered her laptop onto the table, right next to the pad. She knew how Tony was, but ever since he came back from Afghanistan, his eccentric and playful self was rarely seen. He locked himself away in his workshop for hours on end, working on god knows what, but that wasn't unusual. The only unusual part of his routine was the women – there were none. She thought she'd see a flock of them by his side the week he got back, but she's only seen a couple, and she was pretty sure they didn't stay long._

 _Her heels clicked against the concrete of the stairs that led from the living room to his workshop, and the only thing she can think of was how he was doing. She didn't ask much when he came back, and he always waved at her in dismissal about the whole thing. Tony rarely talked about his feelings, unless he was under a drunken stupor, so Pepper saw his response as unsurprising._

 _She searched for answers as she pressed her access code into the illuminated keypad on the glass beside the door, but all she had were questions._

" _Hey…" His voice was soothing and calm, even though his body was hooked up to a monitor beside him that reported his heart rate. "…Let's see them." He paused. "Show me your hands." He wiggled his fingers in the air and she held them up in return. "Oh wow, they're very small – very petite." He looked down at the glowing arc reactor in his hands, almost cautiously. "I just, uh, I need your help for a sec."_

 _All Pepper could do was stare at his bare chest and the device sticking out of it. Her eyes never left the protruding object in the center of his chest, and from what she gathered from their previous encounter, when he showed it to her in the first place, was that it was the thing that was keeping him alive – that small, circle of light._

" _Oh my god, is that the thing that's keeping you alive?"_

" _It was, yeah. It is now an antique." He rolled the new redesigned and remodeled device in his hand. "This is what'll be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future. I'm swapping it out for an upgrade and… I just… I ran into a… speed bump."_

 _She briefly furrowed her eyebrows. "Speed bump? What-what does that mean?"_

 _The next thing she knew, she was lowering her hand into the cylinder in his chest, feeling the smelly electromagnetic discharge coat her fingers. She shrieked as she felt it between her fingers and deep underneath her nails._

 _Her fingers wrapped around something peculiar, and per his instructions, she pulled on it._

" _Just don't pull out the magnet that's at the—the end of it." He watched the magnet leave his body and waved it away when she wasn't sure what to do with it. "Don't put it back." The monitor behind him beeped furiously and in alert, which made Pepper panic._

" _What's happening? What's going on?" She asked hastily as worry flooded her body._

" _Oh, nothing. I'm just going into cardiac arrest because you yanked out the thing that was keeping me alive." He teased her. He handed her the new model in his hands and told her to quickly put it in._

 _She blinked as she stared at his chest. Purple webs began to inch across his skin from the cylinder. She could hear him, screaming in pain, yelling at her to save him, but she couldn't do anything. She froze in place with the device in her hand and all she could do was stare at him. The purple veins stretched across his chest and crawled up to his neck. It only took a few more seconds before his screams of pain stopped and his body lay limp on the operating chair._

" _You killed him." She heard Rhodey's haunting voice behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him, but she was too scared and horrified to move. "You killed Tony." He leaned closer to her ear. "You killed Iron Man."_

Pepper gasped as her body jolted awake. She took in heaves of air as her body still sat in its panicked state. She could feel the cold sweat on her skin and a part of her could still hear Rhodey's lingering, cold, and hard voice, telling her exactly what she was afraid of – the death of Iron Man.

She peered down at her hands as she tried to regain her composure, but her hands were shaking uncontrollably. She held her breath and tried to calm herself down, but nothing worked. Her eyes searched the room for some sort of relief – she didn't care what it was – and it ultimately laid upon something that stopped her heart from jumping out of her throat.

Tony laid next to her, sleeping peacefully and without a shirt on; one of his arm was draped over his middle while the other was extended outwards, laying right underneath her pillow. The sound of his heavy breathing filled the room as it was the only thing she could concentrate on. He was alive, and the area of skin on his chest, where his arc reactor should be, told her where she was exactly. As much as she wanted to fall back asleep, she couldn't - she couldn't stop seeing his horrified face and hearing his cries for help.

She tossed the sheets off of her and headed for the kitchen, hoping a nice cup of hot water would soothe her.

"I keep thinking that I'll kill him one day," she worriedly told Rhodey, whom sat across from her. They were at a coffee shop, not too far from Avengers Tower, sipping on their cups of coffee and munching on a couple sandwiches.

"Pepper, you're not going to kill him." He tried to reassure her, but it wasn't helping. "You do realize everything he's done up till now is his way of protect you."

"Which is what I'm afraid of," she sighed and paused. "I'm afraid… that one day… he'll die trying to protect me."

Rhodey eyed her worriedly. "And you think he doesn't know that?"

She took a small bite of her sandwich and shook her head at him, not because she doesn't agree with his words, but because she doesn't want to believe any of it. "Tony shouldn't have to protect me – he shouldn't have to risk his life for me."

"What's with you? Where is all of this coming from?"

Pepper glanced at him; it took a while for her to form a sentence as the memories of the nightmares she's been having for the past week flooded her mind. "I keep having these… nightmares."

"Nightmares?" Rhodey raised his eyebrow as he took a sip of his coffee. "What kind of nightmares?"

She stared at him. "The kind that makes you think you're killing Iron Man."

"What's happening in these nightmares?"

"I see myself trying to help him, but in the end… he dies. It's as if I'm causing it – like I'm the reason he'll die." Pepper's shoulders sagged in defeat.

"Pepper…" Rhodey frowned. "…You know Tony would do anything to keep you safe, and I don't think he's about to give up that notion anytime soon."

She sighed deeply as her lips pursed. She hated the idea that she was the damsel in distress and Tony was the superhero that always risked his life to save her. She briefly looked down at her hand and flexed the muscles.

"Why don't you talk to Tony?" Rhodey asked, pulling her out of her own thoughts.

"That's easier said than done." She replied.

"Does he know you're here talking to me?"

"I told him I was going out to lunch with Nat." She kept looking down at her hand.

Rhodey caught her line of sight and knew exactly what she was looking at. He hung out with Tony long enough to know what was up, and he's talking to Bruce enough times to squeeze out a few details. "How's Extremis?"

"Non-existent." She finally looked up at him.

He gazed at her. "Is that what you believe?"

"It's what Tony believes." She replied. "Bruce believes otherwise." She paused to glance down at her hand again. "I don't want to stay like this, James." She paused and shook her head. "I don't want to keep feeling like I can't do anything – like I'm some powerless woman begging her superhero boyfriend to come save the day. I'm tired of feeling useless."

"Are we forgetting what company you're running?" He bit into his sandwich. "Without you, Tony and the company would be in the deepest shit imaginable."

"That's the company." She stared at him. "I'm talking about everything else – I'm talking about—"

"You're talking about superheroes, aliens, monsters, and things we can't explain other than SHIELD." Rhodey interjected.

"I'm talking about being useful that doesn't involve a desk, contracts, and some sweaty businessmen." Pepper said coldly.

"Pepper." He put down his cup of coffee. "You're the most powerful woman in the Fortune 500 and probably in the entire world. Tony knows how important you are more than anyone else, and if you tried to go out there and fight beside him, you know what his answer would be." She looked away in disbelief and took in a sharp breath. "Your safety is his number one priority."

"So, you're saying I should stay behind a desk and some papers."

Rhodey didn't like her response. "No. I'm saying you're trying to convince the wrong person." He put his hand on top of hers and tried to reassure her. "You're a brave, powerful, independent, smart, and cunning woman, Pepper. No one is saying otherwise, but Tony, up there," he glanced up at Avengers Tower that could be seem from their seats. "He needs you more than anything else." Her blue eyes stared into his brown ones. "And as scary as it sounds, I don't know what he'd do if you ever died."

Pepper looked away right after his hand left hers. She knew Rhodey was right, but a part of her was still fighting for some kind of equal footing. Tony was Iron Man – still is – but all she could see was herself, standing in front of his suits like a chink in his armor.

"Hey," Tony greeted her as she emerged from the elevator.

"Hi," she smiled.

"How was lunch?" He kissed her briefly.

"It was good. Nothing fancy."

"With Nat, right?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting," he followed her through the living room. "Because Nat just called saying she was in Russia, visiting some old friends."

Pepper turned her head to stare at Tony, who stared back at her as if he expected some kind of explanation.

"What you do in your spare time is none of my business, Pepper, or maybe it is… not sure which I'm leaning towards – I don't want to sound clingy, but did you really have to lie to me?" He didn't sound angry. He sound upset – sad, even. "You could've just told me you were seeing a friend and I would've been fine with it."

"I was with James." Pepper blurted out.

Tony raised his eyebrows at her and nodded. "Okay, not the person I was expecting. I thought _we_ were dating. Didn't know you had a thing for him, too."

"I just needed to talk to him about something." She ignored his comment.

"And you couldn't have told me the truth?"

"I didn't want you to ask questions."

"Why would I ask questions?" He gazed at her for a brief moment, trying to get a read on her, and after a few seconds, he narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Unless you're hiding something." Bingo. "Something you don't want me to know about."

His soft brown eyes made her defenses crumble. He always did that to her.

"Is it important?" He moved closer to her. She looked away at the last moment in attempts to avoid his gaze, but she could feel his stare burning her skin. "Pepper?"

"I've been having nightmares." She muttered.

"What kind of nightmares?" He asked worriedly.

She finally acquired the courage to look at him. "The kind where I'm killing you."

His eyes widened. "Okay... like you're stabbing me because I did something stupid, like create an artificial intelligence that wants to wipe out humanity, or the kind where you just flat out strangle me in my sleep?" He asked with a bit of humor.

She rolled her eyes at him. "The serious and metaphorical kind where I'm holding the arc reactor in my hands while you're screaming in pain and on the brink of death." A solemn look flashed across his face as he realized how serious she was. "Tony, I killed you." She fell into a state of panic as her bottom lip quivered.

"Pepper," he held her by her waist and pulled her in to hug her. He shushed her and held onto her, trying to calm her down as best as he could. "They were just dreams."

"They're not just dreams." She pulled away from him. "It's what's going to happen if you keep protecting me."

He stared blankly at her. "What?"

"You're going to kill yourself protecting me, Tony."

"Isn't that the point of being a superhero – to protect the world and everyone in it, no matter what the cost?" His voice grew louder.

"If you had to choose, Tony, who would you save? The world, or me?" They already knew the answer, but it wasn't the answer she was after, it was the purpose of the question. Deep down, they both knew he'd do anything to keep her alive, and that's what scared her. How far was he willing to go?

"You already know the answer to that, Pepper." His voice softened in defeat.

"Why am I worth more to you than the entire world?"

"Because I love you!" His stare was as hard as steel. "Because there is no world without you in it."

"The entire world, though, Tony?" She shook her head at him. "You should be saving them instead of me."

"You don't get to make that choice, Pepper. You're not the superhero—"

"—Which is exactly why I'm tired of it being like this!" She briefly raised her voice and it startled him. "I'm tired of being the damsel in distress to Iron Man. I'm tired of people thinking that I'm powerless and that I'm just another vulnerability to a superhero."

"Is that what this is about?" A solemn look washed over his face. "Pepper…"

"I'm not a trophy, Tony." She shook her head. "My life shouldn't come before everyone else's."

"No, you're not a trophy." He felt sorry for making her feel like that. "But you're the most important person in my life and I don't know what I'd ever do if something happened to you." He stepped closer to her. "I'm not crazy, Pepper. If there was some way to save both you and the world, I'd take it, but you will always be number one on my list."

"Tony—"

"It's my choice as Iron Man." He tried to explain. "I'd risk my life to protect you."

"And if you died protecting me?" She felt his arms wrap around her waist and settle at her lower back. "I'd be living with the guilt on my shoulders for the rest of my life." He didn't have an answer for her. "I'd rather die with you than live without you."

He gave her a brief smile. "Then we're on the same page."

She wrapped her arms around him as she leaned into him. She rested her head on his chest and held onto him; she hated feeling useless and powerless. She hated being seen as a form of weakness, because she was anything but weak.

"I love you, Tony."

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "I love you, too, Honey." He let the moment linger before he spoke again. "And you're not a burden, Pepper. I know you can take care of yourself, and I know what you're capable of, or are we forgetting that time you kicked Killian's ass?" He heard her chuckle. "You're the strongest, most capable, badass woman I know, and I think Nat would agree with me."

She squeezed him. "I know."

He breathed a laugh. "Does this mean we're keeping the suit of armor on the table?"

She thought about it for a few seconds. "For now."


End file.
